Guild Wars 2

Joiry.2504:

Turn autoattack off on sword? Why is it ranger is the only class that has to do this? I can’t believe how many people are trying to pass this off as a feature and not a bug.

Most good melee classes do this. It’s only ranged weapons that should be left on auto-attack. For example, thieves with auto-attack on don’t land backstabs reliably and tend to break stealth. D/D elementalists who leave auto-attack on tend to miss casting times and fail combos by mere milliseconds. Mesmers also tend not to auto-attack, as standing still like a frightened deer is actually a good strategy for a mesmer in a field of clones.

So no, Ranger would not be the only class to do that. It does seem to me like they’re one of the classes where it’s more important to do that, though.

Clovis.7386:

Yes lets all be forced to use condition builds. I like not having other options.

I am not a PvP monster but I’ve run into Mud Hooks’ GC ranger build on WvW and it’s something of a terror when done right (curse you, lifesteal food). I am not in this subforum often, do people dismiss this build out of hand?

I keep toying with the idea of leveling a ranger next over my thief; because I am always surprised by how effective good rangers are. And I always laugh when I think I’ve cornered a ranger and suddenly they become a feral perma-evade ball of fury with a sword while also turning me into the neglected homeless bird lady from Home Alone 2.

Also, it seems like some people are under the mistaken impression that Ranger is an awful class. It really does just seem like Necro, in that it’s almost done. If you’d like to see a class that really is broken right now and has a dubious future, go level an Engineer. Remember to bottle and sell the excess despair, because your tears will come gushing forth.

It’s sort of a nonsense question. You should carry more than one weaponset in WvW.

The staff is eminently usable in melee, but more for escaping. Staff is an AoE weapon that specializes in pressure and combos. Most people swap between staff and another weapon set as the situation demands. In the right terrain in WvW, staff is absolutely devastating: hold a bridge, a gap, or an approach with style. But when you’re in an open field most people just move around your zones unless you use something like Signet of Earth to lock them into a Lava Font (which, I might add, is very fun to do if Arcane Power is on your bar).

If you like the caster playstyle but find the staff lacking in some situations, consider Scepter/Dagger or Scepter/Focus as an alternative for when you expect close combat. Scepter has some good medium and close ranged potential. Couple it with a dagger for mobility as a skirmisher or with the focus for better defense and burst.

Either way, the elementalist tends to spec how they want to affect the battlefield, then adopt weapons as roles within that spec. If you want to be flexible, you need more than one weapon.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

Any Engi who uses a build that is heavy on kit swapping can easily achieve pretty much permanent Vigor. Trait Swiftness when equipping a kit, and trait Vigor on Swiftness. Bam, if you’re a heavy multi kit swapper then you have permanent Swiftness. Even if you aren’t, you could still get it with any random kit equipped but just immediately drop it afterwards. A lot of people do this with Elixir Gun. With Runes of Altruism released many will probably be doing this with Med Kit too.

It is true, Engineers can kit swap and thus get a lot of vigor. But there are other problems with this, in that it’s difficult to kit swap AND maintain dps output. Unlike Elementalists, the amount of actual benefit to constant kit rotation is highly situational.

So yes, they can get perma vigor and swiftness, but to do so they have to rotate kits. Since one kit is still much better than every other kit in nearly every situation (except healing), it’s sort of a net lose unless you’re turtling, in which case yes; Engineers can be masters of dying slowly.

If you want to see a broken class with little hope of victory as it currently stands, refer to the Engineer design.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

Elementalist can easily maintain permanent Vigor without really sacrificing anything as well. In fact, it has by far the most kitten Vigor generation of all classes. Ignoring Vigor on Cantrip use, Arcana tree has a 33% chance on crit to proc 5 seconds of Vigor…

You see a lot of vigor on these tanky water+arcane skirmisher builds. Those builds are very popular because of dapheonix’s amazing videos; but you do sacrifice so much potential burst for them. Putting a lot of points into water really nerfs your burst in PvP (in PvE, you can use the vulnerability amping trait reliably so it can balance out). You will also see them in Aura builds, but even then it’s hardly perma-vigor.

But a lot of Elementalists have to use their endurance to heal, and many burst specs lose 10% of their damage output when they start dodging so they really don’t want to. I think Rangers evade a lot.

I will stay silent about Necros because, tbh, I haven’t got a single clue about Necros (never leveled one, don’t really care to either because their sound effects HUHFDSKJLFJNJ annoying).

Necros use other mechanics to mitigate damage. I do not observe them having a lot of vigor. They tend to exploit the often under-appreciated and absurdly high power of regeneration.

Brangien.7462:

nice, the new #4 Greatsword mesmer till they nerf it :P

Wouldn’t most of the circumstances here be valid for iBerzerker modulo a bit of range?

Counterpoint: almost all of the focus skills are powerful control utilities that can be used to help condition builds win attrition wars.

DJRiful.3749:

I’m a bunker Ele and I’m downed so quickly by a glass cannon Thief who just burst 22399 dmg under 10 seconds excluding the Wolf bite me at the end. The red text “not enough energy” is where I went downed and spamming those heal abilities.

Elementalists can do better, you just don’t have stealth so it requires a bit more support or some very reactive defenses.

Seriously, go D/F or D/D and some variant of 25/x/25/x/x (for D/F) or 25/30/x/x/x (for D/D) with high crit and +critdam. If you go D/D, you can easily get Flame Grab to proc over 15k on its own, excluding your other hits. Increasingly you see these absurdly durable D/F elementalists running around burning down people who thought they were safe with >20k bursts.

Why not just try Dagger/Focus? It plays differently but is still quite interesting.

That last bit with the camp capture and holding is stellar WvW play. It’s impressive on the level of “things which actually matter in WvW”, which is rare. Awesome.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

I used to use S/F in combination with Lightning Hammer in dungeons, back with the old EA. Lay down a Firewall, Arcane Wave (burst + blast), Dragon’s Tooth (burst + blast), Phoenix (burst + blast + cleanse + vigor), roll while swapping to water (double heal + double cleanse + regen + blast), Comet (daze + blast), either Trident or Freezing Gust, roll while swapping to earth (cripple + protection + blast), Magnetic Wave (burst + reflect + cleanse + blast). Afterwards, Rock Barrier/Dust Devil, Obsidian Flesh if I felt like I was taking too much damage, swap to air, let off Lightning Strike/Blind Flash. If it’d be useful, I’d use Swirling Winds. Then I’d summon a Lightning Hammer and go to town – that thing is actually absurdly powerful with its auto attack chain (very high sustained AoE dps, AoE blind + blast finisher on final strike).

This let me permanently keep up 21 stacks of Might for my entire team with boon duration runes, solo (more like 23 with constant fire attunement swaps). The rotation itself actually dealt pretty decent damage, given that Dragon’s Tooth, Phoenix, and Magnetic Wave actually burst well when they land (which is easy in PvE). Whole thing took maybe 5-6 seconds depending on how much extra stuff I decided to cast along the way (ex. Trident, Freezing Gust). Lightning Hammer naturally hits like a truck. Even though I was in full Knights gear (armor and trinkets), I was still very easily hitting 2-3k autos with the Lightning Hammer while constantly blinding/spamming blast finishers with constant Fury. I’d continue attunement swapping while using the Lightning Hammer to keep cycling Fury/Regen/Might/Protection/Swiftness for my team and to work with the extra 2% damage per boon (I also usually had like a minute+ easily of Vigor too with the Vigor on crit trait), and rolling for EA effects. There would be a little bit of downtime after finishing up a Lightning Hammer’s charges that I’d fill in with a quick Lightning Strike/Blinding Flash + Dragon’s Tooth that admittedly sucked, but by the time Dragon’s Tooth came back up again I’d repeat over again.

It may not have been the standard Staff or D/D stuff, but it was a whole lot of fun to be rolling everywhere and literally seeing a nonstop stream of blast finishers, and the damage was surprisingly decent (even if it did require a 5-6 second ramp up period). 12 blast finishers every 30 seconds, lol. Probably only Thief clusterbomb spam tops that. Ranger water fields while I was using my Hammer was hilarious, and light fields were great too for retaliation and 2% more damage.

Doesn’t almost all this still work assuming you can do your rolls in earth attunement?

Lifelike.5862:

My conditions thief does around 700 damage per autoattack with a dagger. Yes he attacks much faster, but the damage bombs offer is nothing to sneeze at.

And how much are you healing for, since you’re at about 1/3 the direct dps of a condi thief?

And then there’s also the retalliation I’m almost constantly under thanks to elixer B and light fields.

Retaliation scales with your power.

Lifelike.5862:

Inventions has several traits worth getting for a bunker build. +toughness with shields and shield cooldowns is a necessary skill for the healer bomb build, since you will be using the shield’s blast finisher and projectile reflect a lot. Toughness into power is not bad either since you’re already building toughness if you’re going with +healing power anyway (clerics/apothecary armor, etc)

That and Healing bombs…hmm, seems like all traits that directly benefit my build. And no, I am not giving up everything for it either. My build supports, and it does respectable damage for a supposed ‘full-tank’ build while still being very durable.

Who respects the damage output of a x/x/30/30/x bomb build with a shield and a whopping +100-200 converted power from traits? Minion master necromancers? But I can see why you want toughness with the elixir bombs, they’re one of the more awkward healing delivery mechanisms.

tigirius.9014:

Please don’t tell people that the cone attacks like Fumigate work well because we all know it doesn’t this is one of the cone abilities that’s had serious miss problems since before launch and no it has nothing to do with the camera because the cone attacks on the other classes don’t miss like this and FT. There’s something specific to engineers that’s wrong with these two and the p/p torch ability that causes them to miss in this fashion. It doesn’t matter where my camera is on my toon it still misses 40% of the time even when trying to cure friendlies.

I disagree with this. I notice the same cone targetting issues leveling my elementalist. It’s worse with Flame Grab. Whiffing with that after a setup can be pretty demoralizing. Cone targeting seems to be problematic.

Lifelike.5862:

Healing turret explosion isn’t unreliable if you time it right. I can nail it 100% of the time after some practice, it’s really not hard at all. Drop, delay a bit, then detonate. It works every time so long as someone doesn’t put a field on it right after the water field deploys.

The problem is that there can be disconnects between what a slightly laggy player sees and what the server sees. This has been a problem for a long time.

Lifelike.5862:

As for healing bombs, if you’re specced for healing, you SHOULD be using the bomb kit and you SHOULD be taking 30 in inventions.

Nothing in Inventions helps healing except that specific trait. You’re better off just speccing into tools for extra Super Elixir fields unless your goal is to walk around like a robot saying, “Beep beep boop boop I am a Red Mage from Final Fantasy XI year 1 would you like refresh beep beep boop boop is it clear I am a healbot in this metaphor?” You will be doing nothing worthwhile except tiny extra heals unless you’re also 20-30 into explosives, in which case how exactly are you staying alive?

Lifelike.5862:

I just can’t see any other healing builds for engineer working without the bombs. They bring so much to the table. I use 30 in both alchemy and inventions, but if I had to drop 10 points in one tree I’d probably choose alchemy (because kit refinement with elixer gun can sort of cover for the lack of condition removal if you don’t get cleaning formula.)

Even your described build is mediocre compared to other classes support abilities, and you give up everything for it. You might have noticed this is the complaint with the class right now.

Lifelike.5862:

As for the elixer gun skills, 1 is still in most cases more useful than your pistol shot

Both need tweaks. Both are not very good.

Lifelike.5862:

and 3 is an additional form of condition removal on top of super elixer. Combined with that and cleansing elixers, you get plenty of ways to remove conditions.

Or let the necro do it and hurt the enemy in the process. And if you’re dropping light fields left and right that should be more than enough, anyways.

Lifelike.5862:

Why are you just leaving your healing turret out and not immediately detonating it within it’s own water field?

Because it’s a longer cooldown? Most people drop then pickup.

Also, doing this is unreliable. It being unreliable is a known and long-established problem.

Lifelike.5862:

Why aren’t you using healing bombs?

Going more than 10 in inventions is pretty tough to justify given how much better Alchemy is as a tree.

Lifelike.5862:

Elixer Gun is not a sacrifice of a precious utility at all…it’s a single utility that gives you 5 more utilities, each of them extremily useful.

On the Elixir Gun skills

1. is a weak attack that is inferior in every way to other classes weakness delivery, and cannot stack bleeds well.
2. is not bad.
3. is atrociously bad; with terrible damage, mediocre condition removal and application, and all the awkwardness of cone targetting.
4. ’s damage is not bad, but it can be a tricky skill to use in many environments. More than one engineer has jumped to her/his death because the server said “You are pointing this way” and their screen said, “You are pointing THAT way.”
5. is great, even after the nerf, and at least brings condition removal to the table, but most people feel it’d be better as a water field because then it could do appreciable healing. It enjoyed a brief period of popularity because it was nearly as good as Healing Rain, but with a better cooldown.

imaginary.6241:

KirinDave.6451:

There is no reason to drop the rifle turret, ever.

Yes there is – as a blast finisher and additional two static discharges.

If you want a blast finisher, any turret will do. I’m not sure what you mean by two additional static discharges, detonating the turret doesn’t clear the cooldown; it’s just such a fast cooldown that usually it’s clear by the time you can drop, trigger, then detonate the turret.

The toolbelt skill is the best toolbelt skill for static discharges (the only thing that comes even close is the personal battering ram toolbelt skill, which only loses because of the longer cooldown), but the turret itself is almost comically bad except to get said blast finisher.

Good post.

It might also be worth noting that of all the turrets, the biggest loser is the Rifle Turret. Go to the mists and test using just the rifle toolbelt and your autoattack vs dropping the rifle turret and your autoattack with 0 traits. Using just the toolbelt is faster even if you key the rifle ability.

Do so again with max toolbelt enhancing traits vs. max turret enhancing traits. Note how much better it is to never drop the rifle turret ever and instead just use the toolbelt skill on cooldown with a spark. Since the rifle toolbelt comes off cooldown so fast, the quality of that skill only goes up.

Every other turret has at least one good reason to drop it except for the rifle turret. The Net turret is slow but very good at what it does, the healing turret gives regen and heals, the thumper turret helps with blast finishers, the flame turret can be used to blind tank… There is no reason to drop the rifle turret, ever.

1. The flamethrower is not a particularly good kit right now, except for specific encounters. Don’t use it all the time. When you do use it, it seems like most people recommend letting it freeze enemies to help support you when you do end up 1v1 with it.
2. Most builds go 30 into alchemy right now, the Alchemy traits are good. Your first 5 points should definitely go there for Hidden Flask. It’s a really good minor trait accessible early. Lots of people like to go 10 into tools first for “Speedy Kits”, but this is somewhat overrated in my opinion. Hidden flask and Elixir B together mean you can get a lot of swiftness anyways.
3. The only turrets worth leveling with are thumper and flame. The flame turret is useful for blind tanking.
4. Early on, the rifle is your best bet. You probably know by now condition builds are not great while leveling.
5. Even later on, engineer weapons scale best when you mix more power and less condition damage unless you go for very specific bleed stacking builds, in which case crit is the way to go.
6. For some reason the popular geometric scaling of crit% + precision doesn’t seem to work so well with engineers. Probably because of their slow rate of fire for big hits coupled with very very small hits on their more rapid weapons (e.g., a flamethrower run will hit for MUCH less than other fast weapons like Longbow’s rapid-fire, so it’s not as great a payout).
7. Adjust your expectations as Anet fixes the class. You will not outperform your Ele. But engineer gameplay will make you better at your ele by helping you practice fast keywork.

Just to let people know what it feels like to have an L80 engineer: I do not get groups for fractals except from charitable guildmates. And most of the people are not kitten about it, “This is a PUG and fractals past 8 can be dicey with PUGs. An engineer is just too weak to bring. Sorry! Maybe when I have more guildies we can take you.”

Charity. How mendacious of them.

But I’ve also realized that to some extent they’re right. The engineer is a miserably underperforming class in every venue except sPvP, where there are some acceptable bunker builds. It’s to the point where I don’t want to inflict my engineer on other people. I am at the point where I feel guilty bringing an engineer into a party because I am pretty sure I am doing 1/4 of what anyone else facerolling the keyboard could do.

I have never been so demoralized about a class in a game, ever. I can barely lot onto the engineer at all because I know just how insanely, toxicly bad it is. It’s doubly bad for me becuase my favorite game mode is WvW and my engineer is absolutely useless for WvW, and has been for a long time. Grenades have never been a useful option for light roamer groups, and they probably never will be. And if they are, perhaps? I am not sure I care anymore.

As someone who does “engineering” of the computer, electrical, and mechanical in real life both for hobby and profession, I do not feel much of that tinkerer/maker vibe in the class. Honestly, the Engineer feels like a rich kid who has bought some gadgets and potions but doesn’t really understand how they work. This sort of subjective feel may not be interesting to you, but I don’t think anyone could name a feature of the class that makes you feel like “an engineer.” So even the lore seems lackluster to me. Between that and the “designed to be a sidekick” direction of the class, it’s all such a bummer.

Kilger.5490:

LOL you’re still in the honeymoon stage, but I hear you.

Oh no, I realize the class is actually very difficult to play. I watched my friend level one to 80 and his primary way of killing things was to use that Fire trait that makes a magma font when downed, I swear.

Kilger.5490:

I rolled elementalist because everyone was saying they were the most underpowered class and that was only a month or so ago. This forum was filled with crying, its changed a LOT. I dont know why, its not like we got that uber buffed. I think a positive mindset is key, and wanting to unravel all the synergies, because there are many many many.

I think everyone is realizing how bad the disadvantaged classes are compared to the advantaged ones, and how much Anet obviously has a plan for Elementalists, Warriors & Thieves.

Seriously though, I have an 80 engineer and I go further than not partying with engineers, I will not join parties for fractals with my engineer because I feel guilty about slowing people down. I dont’ think anyone would ever feel that way about elementalists.

KiefyReefer.8304:

@KirinDave

Also, I’m on a lower tier server. I would assume that the zergs on higher tier servers are more organized and maybe wouldn’t require these tactics for success. If I didn’t need to make sure the zerg focuses that ele or mesmer doing insane dps or that warr who’s downing 3 people every time he runs into the front line then maybe my options would open up a bit.

I’m on Borlis Pass, which is not in the top 10 but moving up. Remember us? I never really camped AR’s spawn too much though, I was bothering other people with a flamethrower magnet build and focused on preserving siege at spawn camps. Which is a pretty funny role and one of the few places having knockdowns and flamewalls is important.

But seriously, your function is: contribute damage, all of the magnets, and all of the nailboxes. As much zone rooting and zone crippling as you can when zergs face off so that your zerg can press forward but the enemy group cannot easily do so.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Levetty.1279:

Personally I think the best thing they could do for this game is remove the PvP, just shift that whole community off into a seperate game because it is one of the worst I have seen in gaming.

They think their own little world is the most important thing and should dictate how the rest of the game is and start raging every time there is an update for the PvE side they also have no idea how the game works or what dodges are. It is just a constant cry of nerfs for any class that can do a bit of damage. They think Mesmer and Ranger are OP while Warrior needs buffs, tell that to anybody who plays PvE and they would laugh in your face about how out of touch you are. PvE shouldn’t have to suffer because of how bad the PvP players are at the game.

PvE and PvP were eventually split in GW1 because of balancing issues, why didn’t they continue this to save themselves the trouble in the first place?

They already do. Several skills behave differently in PvP than they do in PvE and WvW. WvW is explicitly not fair and based around large engagements and tactics. PvP is e-sport.

Why does your build matter in a zerg? Your sole role is Magnet and maybe bursting oil cauldrons and archers.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

I have used something like that before.
like this
http://www.gw2db.com/skills/calc/elementalist#3|17|1119|2481|2817|3975|1027|25|917|1658|0|25|1619|2249|0|0|0|0|0|20|2260|1673|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|0|28028|28041|49960|49960|49960|49960|49960|25790|48792|0|0|0|0|
25 fire burn on crit, +10 charges
25 air +20 damage to low health, more crit damage on arcane skills.
20 water vulnerability on arcane and signet, +20 damage to vulnerable targets.
plus passives.
on crit: 60 to cause vulnerability, 30 to burn.
+5 damage to burning targets.

20+5+(vulnerability) to most mobs
20+20+5+(vulnerability) to hurt mobs.

Which makes the vulnerability on bow 2 not needed opening up for more conjures.
the air signet is instant which makes it very usable plus it makes up for lost speed.

still not a fan of the +10 charges but i dont use conjures as main damage much.
it could be replaced with another +5 to burning. still the ice bow is very strong and plays like a normal mage so +10 charges with it is reasonable i guess.

These crit chances dont help out lower level players much unless… arcane power counts as a crit which i dont know. if it does then that is pretty cool.

regular weapon skills would be for utility and some burst.
ice bow conjure is .25 seconds so it can be added to combos from weapons.

Arcane power crits do count as regular crits, but it can be dicey how the hits are counted. For example, churning earth pulses are hits.

I also think that build could actually be very good with a staff. You could swap freely between the superior close-fighting options of the conjures and the superior control and AoE options of the staff.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

Red Falcon.8257:

No other class has a skill that’s this prone to not work.

Say what. You say you’ve extensively played other classes… Engineer Flamethrower…

My first thought was, “This person has not played Engineers or Elementalists at all” as well.

Everybody talks about thief stealth like it’s a thing to rage at, but I think that there’s equally this problem the thief presents: to fight a thief you must anticipate their actions.

The problem is lots of people in this game are terrible, and act without any real logic. So you’ll see people stealth and unstealth randomly, use shadowstep inefficiently (if not crazily), or otherwise embarass themselves. Those people, you fight one way. Then you meet the people who understand how to bamf about sagaciously, how to chain stealth, and how to use thief’s stealth as a control option to win attrition fights, and how to actually use their burst to affect teamfights. These people can be beat, but require very different strategies.

The two strategies are generally mutually exclusive. And it can be difficult to adjust the strategy midflight. In tPvP, teams work this out (and the rando hapless folks are rare). In sPvP, you can work it out by you will probably lose a fight if you guess wrong. In WvW, it’s really hard.

I know that’s what frustrates me when I fight thieves. I know what I could do to stop a variety of thieves on a variety of characters, but it takes a moment of seeing the thief in action to get that intel and usually the fight is altered significantly by the time you can adjust.

And I am not sure it can really be fixed. It’s a feature of the thief class: they get to initiate 9/10. And because of that they get to pace the fight good thieves can be incredibly difficult to read if they think you’re actually paying attention.

You can contrast this with other frustrating classes like the Mesmer, and you can see a different. Fighting a mesmer is hard because they confuse your vision, but you can generally figure out the build within a second and start to formulate a strategy. So while they’re annoying, they’re not nearly so much as the thief.

Destroyer.1306:

Heh. Since the most recent patch, I’ve one-shot two people in WvW.

Congratulations. But do try to actually contribute rather than popping sparks on upleveled L20s with power gear. Breakout events mean you get less slack to go make highlight reels (of you not contributing a whit to the map status, but hey cool kills bro) if you want to keep all those nice leader bonuses.

It’s also an extreme mischaracterization to say people are “whining” that the class is too weak. Most of the complaints are, “That is a terrible direction for the class and the changes you’ve made and promise to make will only hurt that cause.” We have no confidence that Anet has a coherent plan for the Engineer.

Luriyu.6873:

don’t be ashamed for running away, you’re still contributing if you’re kiting 6 people around a borderlands for 30 minutes because those 6 people aren’t defending, roaming, or sieging.

This logic works in PvP but is really questionable for WvW. In general if you’re running around not capping things, killing supply, protecting supply, or defending key junctions you are not using your time well.

6 people missing from a zerg is not going to foil a tower siege. A lot of people love roamer builds because they’re photogenic, but very few roamers are good enough to actually make a difference in a close match, especially on your borderland.

Chasing, locking down, and finishing are undervalued skills in WvW. It is the lack of lockdown builds that make D/D Elementalist such a terror right now (the Stallion Who Kites the World builds).

If you build specifically to lock down and attrition kill P/D thieves and D/D elementalists, you’ll have an incredibly valuable role in skirmish groups and that group can have a pretty profound effect when the map is split.

Minion of Vey.4398:

It’s sad that a tree is so bad that just the act of putting points into it is a handicap requiring a thread like this.

No offense, but I really don’t think that’s the right way to look at it. The elementalist trait trees are obviously crafted with a lot of love (a lot more than other classes, anyways), and I’ve seen a huge variety of builds pop up exploiting all sorts of weird synergies. Have you see that bizarre tri-elemental scepter burst combo that relies on being in melee range? I’m still laughing at that. Have you see what they’re doing in the conjure thread here?

And we’ve seen some really awesome staff builds despite how much spleen venting there is here about the staff (even post EA nerf). I suspect someone will popularize a 25 or 30 fire build soon.

Because seriously, you have no idea what “bad” traits are like until you look at Necromancer Death Magic or Engineer Inventions. Did you know until just recently Engineers were dropping 30 in Alchemy for a GM trait that granted ONE extra might when using alchemy utilities and toolbelt skills. Meanwhile Elementalists are asking, “Is one might per spellcast really worth it?”

Actually this conjure-build thread has serious WvW potential. Not every WvW role has to be The Ultimate Roamer™. The idea of using a staff and then using conjures to supplement your close game and confuse the heck out of opponents is very appealing to me.

Crunchy Gremlin.5798:

Problem with dependance on bow 2 for vulnerability is the single targetness of it.
still water dagger 1 can get multiple targets vulnerable but i never use it that way.

Perhaps nip off a bit of damage for consistency in the water tree? Swap Water IV for Water II, and now arcane and cantrip skills give vulnerability, so you’d either be using the bow or the sword instead of having a full rotation required. It might also make sense to swap over to a signet heal and arcane lightning in that case.

There’s also this interesting idea of going all in on water as your damage attunement. Go 25 air, 25 fire, get burn-on crit from fire. Now you can easily stack burns and vuln with any attunement, and in water. Itemization is harder but not impossible thanks to frequent fury. You sacrifice +5% damage for a lot more consistency in delivering your damage boost conditions and you gain more flexibility with how you use glyph of power (or swap it out entirely).

Aether McLoud.1975:

Amins.3710:

You’re absolutely right: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wfq5nsj4lfs&list=UUx93rwoTp7k4ZKrW_FKYjYQ&index=1

Gear wins in WVWVW not class. So gtfo.

Wrong. Coordinating wins in WvW, not gear or class. A group of upleveled L50s in greens can beat a team in exotics if they’re organized and their opponents are not.

Monkey Fritz.9052:

Main point = If you want to roll mobile turrets, roll necro, since that build already exists.

And then: learn to hate it because minion AI is very finicky. For example, if in tab targetting between enemies you highlight a more distant enemy you are not engaged with and one of your minions attacks its current target (not that one), then that brief ephemeral tab targetted enemy seems to get added to the aggro list. So once your primary target is down, your loyal necro minions cheerfully run off to aggro that. And you’re obligated to help them, because the cooldown if they die is irritating to suffer.

Turrets don’t have that problem because they don’t move.

omgwtflolbbl.7142:

Also, OP charts all the way up to 3800 armor BEFORE he hits (or is about to hit) the supposed break even point, even with the issues pointed out before (ex. stack Sigils unaccounted for or not?).

Ha, I missed that because I was reading on a phone on a train. Good catch.

Absurd thesis is absurd.

LegoTechnic.5910:

Real engineers worth the title don’t cause catastophic failures, they cause situations in which their redundancy measures kick in. Upper management typically leads to catastrophy by completely dismissing engineer concerns and/or not allowing said redundancy.

Man I gotta find more real engineers to work with in the software world. Silicon Valley is full of folks who love to live life on the edge of technical competence (“Would. You. Please. Just. Aggregate. Logging,” I say through clenched teeth, a vein in my forehead throbbing.) Small-scale engineering is about dedication. Large-scale engineering is about pessimism.

But I think one of the biggest thematic letdowns for me with Engineers is how there is nothing of “engineering” in them. I was hoping for a hopelessly fiddly class where a near infinite and absurd amount of customization was possible. Like point allocation into turret stats and stuff. Didn’t get it. I hoped for some idea of like customizing equipment. Didn’t get it. I hoped for some idea of repairing siege gear. You can repair turrets but it’s sort of foolish to do so, so I didn’t get it.

There’s no trace of the Maker Culture in engineers except some vague steampunk overtones, and even those are sort of underplayed. And I sort of could deal with that, because the kit play allowed you to have styles. But then I’m told a high-difficult high-apm class is deliberately underpowered for versatility, and the promised features in the future will hurt versatility by increasing the importance of itemization. Bummer

Oh well, Elementalist has been really fun to level, as has Mesmer and Thief.

innocent ouarior.1954:

Fire:
- RoF is widely superior to Flamewall
- Fire Grab is so much damage it wouldnt even match an extra aura.

So, something you learn as a Flamethrower engineer is that WoF (which is on the Flamethrower kit) is actually useful for some things. One of those things is throwing over downed opponents who you cannot immediately stomp. Not unlike other fire fields, it does a pretty good job of keeping someone down even in the face of a single helper for its duration. It’s just slightly better because it’s easier to position. The reason it’s good at this is that the wall is actually bigger than its visible size, and if placed properly means even a helper will take hits.

That doesn’t save it as a skill compared to RoF, but people keep saying WoF is useless in PvP and it’s not. Oh, and Elementalists can build for condition damage without being idiots, so that helps a lot for burn.

Earth:
- Magnetic Wave is very good. Reflect, cure condition and actually does a good chunk of damage. I wouldnt trade Earthquake for it tho, AoE KD + Blast finisher is that good.
- I would however, even if Churning Earth is great damage, trade it for Obsidian Flash. 4 sec absolute invulnerability is amazing. Sadly it doesnt make up for all the rest.

Considering you’re probably taking more arcane skills with the focus anyways, I’d say losing the blast finisher is a fair trade. These two earth skills are just insanely, awesomely, crazy good. Especially if you’re deep in earth for additional stability and you’ve got boon duration enhancements…

Earth focus elementalists are pretty good stompers; they can get access to a lot of stability, protection, reflection and invulnerability. I’ve seen them used to this effect in WvW, and the results are not bad. Did you know Earth I turns on during stomps?

Could the defensive nature of the focus help to offset a more aggressive build in WvW? Most of the traiting and itemizing I see for Elementalist WvW is centered around healing and defense, with very little though to offense.

If the focus affords so much more defense, could it be used to up the offensive part of a build balance a bit more and still keep survivability? Don’t get me wrong, the d/d roamer is an amazing thing. I just wonder if there is a bricky build that is focused on tower defense and, with some help, can actually break enemy sieges directly.

For the record, I also feel like staff is underappreciated in WvW. I’ve related my experience elsewhere, but I’ve seen staff wreck people with shocking speed when used in the context of a CC-heavy team.

Kintoun Zetto.2651:

>Elementalist easier to play

I said they were harder to play. In the sense that to play them well you have to be considering more of your environment and what will happen next. I’ve always found “reactive” styles like the engineer much easier, because they’re playable by muscle memory.

And if you think Engineers are harder, I disagree. Elementalists permanently roll with 4 kits and manage more cooldowns and a lot more changes “kit to kit.” Further, you don’t have the hp and toughness of an engineer. You die more easily when you mess up, and what constitutes “messing up” is harder.

Most people find Elementalist very hard to level until the class “clicks” for them.

Meanwhile, an ele can perform substantially well doing little more than f1, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, f2, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, f3, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, f4, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, etc. avoiding their cool downs entirely and causing massive kitten to just about everything.

Doing this will not constitute “good” play for an elementalist, and I heartily encourage you to put 20-40 levels into the class if you haven’t already. Even staff cannot play this way.

Imagine if your kits had >10s cooldowns and you have to take 4 and the only way to win is to use all of them. That’s what elementalist is like.

Grenades didn’t even auto attack for goodness’ sake. Oh AND ele’s get to keep their utility skill slots instead of sacrificing them on their “elements”.

And engineers get super-fast recharge toolkit spells that vary from “not a waste” to “quite good” when you factor in trait and whatnot.

I don’t know what you’re trippin’ on dawg, but if you think ele is harder, I question if we’re even playing the same game.

It sounds like you have no idea how to play Elementalist. You know what’s also way harder to level for the first 30 levels? Thief. Know what’s also way harder to level for the first 40 levels? Mesmer. Where Engineer peters out is post L60. Before then, they’re actually quite good, eclipsed only by warriors and guardians in terms of facerollability. Just drop a flame turret and blindtank everything, then bomb kite what you can’t facetank. It’s not fast, but it’s 0-risk.

But then you hit 80 and realize what your limits are.

Most rational people are not upset over the grenade changes. What they’re upset over is the new stated direction of the class, which as described is basically Robin to everyone else’s Batman; eternally in a second fiddle spot.

People get a lot of enjoyment over playing Elementalist or Thief well because it’s so very easy to play it wrong and fall apart. It’s a challenge with a reward (particularly in PvP & WvW). Engineers are being told they have to work harder, but their maximum output will be deliberately tweaked to be below what everyone else can achieve.

You’re being told your class is weaker by design, because you can be more “versatile” in mid fight. But this proposition of mid-fight diversity is dubious at best, and it’s not clear how stat allocation makes this even remotely possible.

Rakenclaw.3508:

Well it looks like Eng concerns will be dealt with. Hope soon comes quick!

I think people are more upset with the new stated direction to the class than the actual nerf to the first grenade ability.

Dispari.3980:

Kimbald.2697:

I’m sorry but now you are the one missing the bigger picture.
There are 7 other test tables with glasses here as well, most of those glasses are more filled than ours.

So no: it does not make sense to remove some of that one fuller glass of ours… it makes perfect sense to fill up all our other glasses first, till we are on the same level as the other tables.

You forget we’re getting weapon stats in the future. What you’re saying would just lead to nerfs later instead of now.

I’m concerned this will actually hurt the class.

See, right now you can sort of use whatever weapons you want and then still have baseline kits. So you can spec crazy defense healing weapons and it doesn’t hurt your flamethrower or grenades a whit; they ignore everything. For that as-of-yet-unachieved goal of “mid-battle role switching” having some independence from your gear is actually sort of nice.

Consider as an example elementalist conjures. They use your base+armor stats but come with their own unique coefficients and stat bonuses, and in some cases those stat bonuses are as good as a few pieces of gear (although usually not over as many stats).

That’s a way better model for engineer kits than what we currently get. I’m not sure why they didn’t just reuse that mechanic with open swapping.

amiable.4823:

Vadon.1496:

Best way to protest is just to reroll and dont play engineer anymore.

This. i’m quite enjoying me D/D elementalist. Plays very much like an Engineer except with better damage, more survivability, better synergy and skills that actually work.

I am too. I’ve leveled a D/D Ele, Thief, and Necro to L30-40 and I’m probably sticking with the Elementalist next. It’s pretty much everything I wished the Engineer was, albeit a lot harder to play.

Engineer is kind of pushups and training for the much harder kind of long-cooldown-high-apm gameplay that is Elementalist, so that’s good. There’s also a lot of room for the class to grow in community knowledge; one need only read forums of PvP ele staff haters then go into WvW and be utterly wrecked by a Staff Ele duoing with a CC specialist to see how much room there is to grow there.

Arheundel.6451:

I have already stated that you won’t beat ever a decent player with a staff, no decent player will ever walk over ‘eruption’ ( no churning earth which is dagger OH earth 5).

Against a r40+ warrior/guardian/mesmer/thief for example you won’t survive long enough to cast another frozen ground, they can flipping teleport/leap at you every 10s or so and burst you down in a fraction of that time

Well there is this sort of implicit assumption that every elementalist weapon should be viable for every possible scenario. Everyone in sPvP at high rank is really good and they spec balance with high mobility. It seems natural the staff would be of limited use there.

Should every weapon be viable in every context? I don’t know.

I had a really hard time up until I stopped trying to make scepter work and just gave in to the D/D pve world. It’s sort of amazing how well it works at low levels; it’s by far the easiest character I’ve ever had.

The strategy for large pulls is simple: dart in; kill one enemy, run away until you’re full, then run back in. With current gear, almost nothing in low levels can take the abuse you dish out in fire nor can they hit you if you dart away with RTL or scoot off. Perhaps it helped that I played thief a bit first and realized how powerful positional awareness could be. Enemies have hit cones and turning speeds just like players do, and you can LOS most enemies just like you could do to a player.

I’m always confused why staff casters don’t seem to recommend Zephyr’s Focus from the Air tree. Don’t a lot of the staff abilities have channels? Is it because the skill is bugged or is it because it’s easier to just get vigor from other skils?

Sifu.6527:

I want the same 42% DPS increase the ranger and warrior got.

You can have it if you’re willing to close to melee distance, it seems.

So I am not going to comment on what anyone should do, my elementalist is only L30 and I’m still learning the class. But I will say what has happened to me.

In my L80 Engineer in WvW, (now defunct because ANet’s goal seems to be to make all engineers into cheap sidekicks) I one time worked with a pretty good staff Elementalist who, with some coordination with me, would absolutely destroy enemies. My goal as the engineer was to draw an enemy in (with magnet from toolkit, which since Nov has been a really amazing tool) into a caltrops field. I called out that I was doing this and the Elementalist, way far away, would basically drop a series of brutal damage attacks down and wipe anyone I could pull in. Between the Engineer CC and the focused damage this Ele could put out, I never saw anyone survive. The kill rate was 100% except for people specifically traited and skilled to overcome repetitive CC.

It got to the point where we were the ones doing thief hunting in roaming groups. I’d find them by being bait (one thing that engineers do well is die slowly even to burst) and drop them and even if they had a blind+stealth it wasn’t enough to actually escape before they were atomized in the AP+fire attacks. Even big bunker builds like the infinite guardians could only survive if they had their block up or had CC reactive traits and knew to get some kind of stability up fast so they could run. Teleports are sort of useless against that combo, you actually have to be able to ignore knockdowns and dazes.

I’ve never met another Elementalist that had the desire or ability to do that with me, but it was one of my most successful nights in WvW ever. I’ve tried to replicate it, because it was an exceptionally rewarding playstyle (I’ll hold ’em you hit ’em!) but have yet to find anyone willing to try it.

You can protest by playing another class and having fun with it. Engineers already have exceptionally low numbers and a sudden dip after a patch should only make that worse. Despite conspiracy theories otherwise, generally game design and dev teams take that kind of feedback seriously.

fluidmonolith.3584:

AlietteFaye.7316:

Not many talking about it because the 10 points for Speedy Kits is still a much better bargain. It’s not bad if you’re going for a tanky build like yours, but otherwise is completely overshadowed.

I agree. We have 3 movement speed increasing traits, but there isn’t much choice between them.
Speedy kits gives you +33% speed in and out of combat, just for turning a kit on and off.
Power Shoes gives less speed (25%), and only in combat. I could only see it as being reasonable if you didn’t use kits at all, or didn’t care about out-of-combat speed.
Then there’s Leg Mods, which is still only 10%, and only when you have an unarmed kit.

I think for most purposes, Speedy Kits is going to be preferred, with maybe non-kit builds selecting Power Shoes (and being at an out-of-combat speed disadvantage), and no one would ever select Leg Mods.

I’m pretty sure Leg Mods and Power Shoes stack though. Movement skills cannot stack over 33%, but they can stack up to it (with the slick shoes toolbelt skill being something of an exception).

It’s too bad that 30 in alchemy is basically required, because that’s basically swiftness in combat without a lot of heartache and without being subject to boon stripping or stealing. If Alchemy wasn’t such a critical tree it’d be decent to go ?/?/20+/?/20+ for permanent +30% speed in combat. One could imagine a pretty neat turret+bomb build there.